Sarah Longwell: They Support Gun Rights—But Only for Republicans
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
Fresh off MSNOW's The Weekend with Catherine Rampell, Sarah Longwell explains why the killing of Alex Pretti is breaking through with voters—and why government lies and Second Amendment hypocrisy aren’t holding up.
Watch The Weekend on MSNOW: https://www.ms.now/the-weekend
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, I just jumped off the weekend show over at MS now with a bulwark colleague, |
| 0:06.0 | Catherine Rampel, where we were talking about the outrage, the continuing outrage about what is |
| 0:12.7 | happening in Minneapolis, the lies that our government officials are telling about it. |
| 0:17.3 | But most specifically, I talked about the hypocrisy of the right now suddenly |
| 0:22.3 | deciding that the Second Amendment is apparently only for conservatives. And so we have a little |
| 0:28.1 | bit of a debate about what the Second Amendment is really there for, which is to protect Americans |
| 0:34.2 | from the tyranny of their government, which is exactly what we're experiencing right now. |
| 0:39.6 | Go check it out. |
| 0:40.6 | Joining us now, Sarah Longwell, publisher of the bulwark and host of the Focus Group podcast |
| 0:45.4 | and full disclosure, the person who hired me at the bulwark, and Baratunde Thurston, writer, host, |
| 0:50.7 | and creator of the Speak Easy Substack newsletter. Why doesn't Alex Preti get the same pass |
| 0:57.6 | that all of these other people do? Yeah, this is a question of whether the Second Amendment |
| 1:03.8 | only applies to conservatives. But I want to talk about something that's bigger than just |
| 1:10.0 | Republicans suddenly forgetting their commitment to the Second Amendment because they're also forgetting their commitment to the First Amendment. |
| 1:18.8 | Alex Prattie had free speech rights to be out there protesting. |
| 1:22.8 | He had Second Amendment rights to be out there carrying a gun for which he had a permit. People have Fourth |
| 1:29.5 | Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure. Something that was inherent to people who |
| 1:35.8 | came up on the right. And maybe at least remembers this, but they were always mailing us. If you |
| 1:41.1 | were part of these organizations, they would send you these pocket constitutions constantly. I've got stacks of them from my time coming up on the right. But when |
| 1:49.9 | Donald Trump said that he would suspend the Constitution prior to the election in 2024, what we're |
| 1:57.3 | seeing now is a wholesale abandonment of principles. |
| 2:01.5 | Doesn't matter whether it's a second amendment, whether it's the First Amendment, fourth amendment, |
... |
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